Jeff Hawkins and I had a fabulous time on Elephant Perch in the Sawtooths. We did the bottom half of Sideline in the afternoon after the boat ride up Redfish Lake and hiking in. Then the second day, the Mountaineer's Route, which was so great that the third day, we looked at ourselves and said "how do we top that?" and hiked back out. Warbonnet will have to wait, hopefully when there is less snow on the approach.

Three drops of rain each, on the tent and on Mountaineer's, just enough clouds to keep the temps comfortable. Terrific crux 5.9 finger crack and hand jam pitch (thank you, Jeff, I was happy to let you have the mantle move!).

Sideline is the next-to-last route on the right coming out of the base of the descent gully. We actually added an easy 0th pitch to avoid scrambling up around the first chockstone. Sideline bypasses the 10a first two pitches of Astro Elephant and you can then do the upper 5.9+ half of Astro Elephant, but we only had the afternoon and weren't motivated to go back and finish it on the last day. Neither of us felt like stepping up to 5.9+, the 20 feet of psycho pro on the 5.9 slab pitch on Sideline was enough for me!

What a beautiful area! Too bad I forgot my camera on Mountaineer's, then it failed.